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All Created Equal

Entry 2303, on 2023-11-08 at 13:43:46 (Rating 4, Politics)

According to the United States Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."

It's a commonly quoted phrases and one which is widely accepted as a form of political rhetoric to support many different (often contradictory) ideologies. But compare it to this one from Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn: "Human beings are born with different capacities. If they are free, they are not equal. And if they are equal, they are not free."

Of course the real problem is that the words can be interpreted in several different ways, and this is almost always the case with these sorts of political phrases. There's a very good reason why lawyers try to make laws more specific by using the ponderous language they do, and there's a good reason why programmers use programming languages instead of English to program computers. In both cases it is because natural languages are non-specific.

Write some code in a programming language and you will get the same, correct result 100% of the time (if there are any errors it is your fault), but write something in English and there are numerous possible answers, all of which could be seen as correct.

So are we all created equal or not? Well, the Declaration of Independence includes a religious claim, that there is a creator, which might affect the outcome, but let's move beyond that.

The claim has its origins in earlier philosophical and theological works and has alternated at different times between the two major ways it could be interpreted: first, that everyone is actually the same, having the same abilities and attributes; and second, that while everyone is different, including regarding their inherent abilities, we should treat them all the same.

It should be completely clear to everyone that the first interpretation cannot be supported in any reasonable way. People are born with different strengths and weaknesses: some have great intelligence, others agility or strength, some have excellent health, others are born with congenital abnormalities, some are just average at everything, others are above average at several things, and some below.

Most human characteristics exist in a roughly normal distribution and the average person is... average. Additionally, it is a fact that many people have trouble accepting that about half of all humans are below average in whatever characteristic you might be considering.

None of this can be reasonably disputed, but in recent times the more woke members of society have effectively decided that people really are equal, and that any apparent differences are due to social factors (primarily repression from the dominant societal groups) which must be corrected. From this we get the concept of equity.

Equity is a way of overcoming the natural disparities which exist by artificially enhancing the position of "repressed" members of society. In many ways this sounds like a great idea: surely everyone being the same is a great goal, but it doesn't really work that way, because there are numerous unintended consequences, just like there always are when politicians dabble in social engineering.

When one group is given an advantage, even if the intention for equity is a good one, there are inevitable disadvantages to other groups and to society as a whole.

Let's look at the latest trendy example, because these political ideologies are really nothing better than mindless fads, and tend to come and go. The current example of trans politics. Yeah, this discussion suddenly sounds dangerous, doesn't it? Why is that? It's because this has become like a religion, and religions never like having their beliefs questioned (other examples: feminism, COVID politics, climate change).

In the past, women were the group who were seen as repressed and in need of the help from our valorous social justice warriors, but as I said above, that fad has been replaced with another one, and now women are being disadvantaged because men who identify as women are being given the good old equity treatment. And that's fine, except for one thing: by doing that, the more fundamental rights of women are being ignored. This is a classic case of what I mean by the unintended consequences of equity, although you do have to wonder how unintended they really are in this case.

And here's another example: affirmative action. This has been a controversial practice for many years, and only recently has there been some indication that the tide is turning against it. The most obvious example has been in US universities where "disadvantaged" groups are given preferential entry.

As a result of this people enter prestigious university programs based on things other than merit. Here are the differences in average IQ (compared with white Americans) of different racial groups for medical students in the US: Asian +4, White 0, Hispanic -17, Black -18. So if you see a black doctor, there's a good chance he or she will be considerably less intelligent than an Asian doctor. I know intelligence is't everything, but could you blame someone for being hesitant to see a black doctor?

So there might be bias against the groups who were supposed to be helped by this intervention, and that bias is not entirely without merit (although, I must repeat that IQ isn't everything, especially in medicine, where the average is a rather pathetic 111).

You might say that everyone loses with equity. Immediately or superficially this might not be apparent, but long-term it is inevitable - at least when looking at the big picture, because I assume some individuals are advantaged by receiving unearned advantages. And remember that any group receiving the benefits today might be on the other side tomorrow, as women have recently found out.

Equality, in the usual sense, means treating everyone the same even when it is obvious they have different abilities. This means that some groups will be less well represented in some parts of society. For example, base don the stats above, there will be less black doctors in the US. But as long as black people have equal opportunity, I don't see that as bad. After all, they are over-represented in some very well paid jobs, like professional basketball, and I don't see anyone demanding equity for Asians there!

It seems to be that Solzhenitsyn was right: equity (I will use this word to fit the modern context, instead of equality) isn't the great thing many assume it is. You can have equity or you can have freedom, and even if you have equity you will soon find it isn't what you really wanted. We are not all created equal, and even if we should be treated as if we were, equity achieves the exact opposite of this.

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